


Mousquetaires de l'Air

by Thimblerig



Series: Musketeer Shorts [9]
Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik, The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Bathing/Washing, Dragon Babies, Gen, Love and Grief and Other Pernicious Things, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slice of Life, Snippet FIc, there is no plot here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-10 19:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7857364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rectifying the sad drought of dragon crossovers in Musketeers fandom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aramis: Wingman

**Author's Note:**

> Writing some short scenes to bust writer's block. I hope you enjoy, but please don't expect much in the way of plot.

Small even for her breed but perfectly made was Dearling, a courier-grade lightweight who had retained from her hatching an endearing inability to accurately judge her size in relation to significant other things, such as the formidability of a dragon she had determined to fight, or the accessibility of a room she wished to enter. Even so, the Chasseur-Vocifere moved with care through the damp heat of the Egg Room, setting each articulated foot as lightly as a cat on ice and furling her red-brown wings tightly around her long torso. Her serpentine tail trailed in an elegant wave, and she touched her nose, very lightly, to each egg nested into its straw-padded box as she moved past.

“Coming, Dearling?” asked the young airman as he unhooked the latch that led to the Regiment’s bath house. Clouds of steam billowed from the room ahead, dampening his wild hair around his ears.

“Oh yes,” said Dearling, though she arched her neck to peer for one last moment at one of the eggs, a rather unpromising cross between a Defendeur-Brave and a Parnassian.

Inside the bath house, she trotted to the largest, eight-man tub, turned in a delicate circle, and entered it hindquarters first, sending a great wave of steaming water to the stone floor.

Stripping to his linen drawers, Aramis hopped up to the edge of the tub, long-handled brush and a bar of creamy soap in his hands. His dragon leaned into the scrubbing, arching her neck. “And for your next lover I've hooked it down to three: Madame de Chevreuse, Senora de la Vega, and Lady Arlington. The second two aren't as rich but de la Vega makes honey cake and Arlington has the best nose.”

“She is blessed in her proboscis, yes,” murmured Aramis, “but Dearest, don't I get a say in this?” They considered that thought carefully, then laughed.

Once she'd levered herself out of the tub, Dearling shook herself and her Captain dried her as tenderly as one could a nearly four-tonne winged lizard, paying special care to the folds of her underwing and the forked, silvery scar that adorned her right shoulder, souvenir of a death-match with a Chequered Nettle at the Siege of La Rochelle. He oiled her scales until they gleamed, and rebuckled a fighting harness ornamented in curlicues of silver and cabochon gems like drops of blood.

“You changed your mind about Madame Marchand, ‘Dorable?”

She set her off-fore foot down with determination. “The dogs, Aramis, the little yappy dogs. I have nightmares they crawl inside my ears and rattle around. No amount of treasure is worth that.”

“It's settled, then. I was thinking of a promenade in the Luxembourg Gardens on our next rest day. You always look so pretty in the sunlight.”

A sound of a scuffle in the next room and they both twitched. “A hatching? If Treville catches us here again it'll be -”

Dearling dashed for the other end of the steamy room and levered open with her snout the trapdoor used to drop fuel to the fires, eeling her head and long neck through it before sticking at her shoulders. Aramis laughed, dusted off his hands and jumped to pry her out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dearling - a lightweight/courier Chasseur-Vocifere - only carries a crew of one, the wiki indicates some kind of red-brown colouring. The name, ‘ferocious hunter’ implies a combative temperament. Plus, there's a dash of Flecha-del-fuego, a Spanish breed of similar size and colouring. Dearling has yet to develop the Flecha-del-fuego’s gift for fire-breathing, and might never. This annoys her.
> 
> Actually, as ridiculous as Treville finds Dearling’s penchant for hot baths, it's less embarrassing for the regiment than when they scrub up outside, which involves, however isolated the lake or stream, much arching of lovely necks, splashes of crystal-clear droplets catching the sunlight to shine like diamonds, and trickles of water delineating elegant musculature - and the dragon also mugs for the inevitable audience.


	2. Porthos: All Will Be Well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For readers coming to this from the Temeraire fandom, bbc!Porthos has a background of coming from a criminal slum and working his way up through the infantry to the elite King’s Musketeers. He's a bit touchy about it.
> 
> Content warning at the end.

A bell was ringing in the covert. Porthos rolled out of his bunk in the Unassigned Crew quarters and shoved bare feet into long leather boots, his arms into the stiff new aviator coat, and reached for the sheathed sabre hanging from his peg before realising the others that shared his quarters had barely stirred.

“It's an egg hatching,” one of the crewmen explained, hiding his grizzled head under his pillow. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Go back to sleep,” sighed another, knuckling his eyes.

“Hey, let the new kid be,” said Carpentier, propping himself up on his elbow. He nodded to Porthos. “The Egg Room’s to the north; they'll have torches at the door. It's something to see, a hatching.”

Porthos followed the crowd, gentlemen all, from the crisp night to the warm fug of the subterranean Egg Room. In the damp, dark heat, they milled around where the egg’s box had been pulled to the centre of the stone floor and its precious contents lifted out. The chosen Lieutenant, and the Second, if the first should prove unacceptable, and a sprinkle of midwingmen, surrounded it in a close circle. Porthos made himself useful to Serge the Egg Guard and hauled in a tub of freshly slaughtered mutton, scraps of fluffy wool still attached to some of the gobbets of hot meat. Skinny as he was, he still had the height to peer over their heads to see most of what was going on.

It was a long hatching. Porthos watched in fascination as hairline cracks formed in the green-mottled shell, heard through the breathless hush of the officers the faint, irregular tapping from inside… It took too long, perhaps: Old Serge began to tug his iron-grey hair anxiously, and the young Lieutenant reached for the shell before pulling back with a guilty start. “Should we fetch the Surgeon?” someone whispered. “Off with Treville at the breeding ground; no time to get them back,” was the answer. All of a sudden the fragile shell shivered into a thousand pieces and slid away.

The little dragon’s wings drooped, stuck to its sides by drying yolk, and its neck was too weak to lift its oversized head off the ground. Its eyes were large, the only beautiful thing about it, a warm, rich brown that would probably lighten to topaz in the sun. The sunken airsacs under its ribs fluttered weakly, and it wheezed with each breath. “The egg was too small,” someone muttered, “it couldn't grow right.” Another whispered, “Poor little thing.”

The circle widened, dispersed, went.

In the sudden silence Porthos shoved his hand in the tub and held out a palmful of bloody meat. The dragon stared at him, but its large head did not move. Porthos put his other hand under its chin and lifted it a little. “C’mon,” he muttered grimly. “Y’can eat a little, yeah? An’ if y’can eat a little, y’can eat a lot, an’ that'll show those bastards.”

A hand on his shoulder, not unfriendly. “Oh, lad, no,” Old Serge said gently, “sometimes the crossbreeds just don't work. It happens. It's kinder to let it go easy.”

“Her _name,”_ growled Porthos, “is _Marie.”_ He felt a rasping tongue against his skin, amongst the bloody meat and the wool-fluff, felt the dragon’s first swallow along his other hand, and smiled in joyful fury. “An’ she's a fighter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Some drama around the birth of what amounts to a very sickly child, and some harsh attitudes around that.
> 
> Marie - a cross between a heavyweight Parnassian and a Defendeur-Brave. A French version of Kulingile, basically, with a similar growth pattern.


	3. Porthos: All Will Be Well 2

Porthos met Aramis crotch first, which sounds like a joke and they certainly told it that way, later.

At the time, no. He wasn't laughing about anything.

“You're still here?” The lights in the Egg Room were burning down, and Marie's head was heavy in his lap. He looked up and found himself eye-level with The Crotch, draped in damp linen drawers that didn't hide much. Up, and he saw a man rubbing his eyes drowsily and yawning.

“We an  _ inconvenience  _ to you?” Porthos snarled. “Gettin’ in your  _ way?” _

The other shook his head blurrily and blinked hard. His eyes dropped to Marie, collapsed on the ground with one wing opened out and her eyes shut. Her sides heaved like a holed bellows. The tub of meat was still half full. “Ahh.” He dropped to a crouch beside them and touched his fingers to the pulse in her throat. “You know,” he said conversationally, “sometimes the hatching just tuckers them out.”

“Help me get her upstairs,” Porthos said hoarsely. “She's going to see the sky.”

A nod. “We can do that.”

Together they wrestled her onto a canvas stretcher and awkwardly manoevred her heavy weight up the shallow steps.

The air outside was a slap to the face. Porthos’ breath fogged in front of him; there was a ring of frost about the moon. They settled the young dragon in the courtyard and she rested her head again in his lap. The tender skin of her eyelids flickered.

Presently there was a blanket over his shoulders, a warm damp cloth in his hand to clean the last of the egg-muck from her hide. He moved it in slow circles, longer perhaps than was needed, and felt an almost-musical thrum through his fingers as well as the wheeze.  

“She has a strong heart,” said the other. He'd added an aviator’s heavy coat to his garb, but was starting to shiver.

“Shut up.”

A little red-brown dragon, only twice the size of a cart horse, flopped to her belly. “Such language, Aramis, well I never,” she complained, showing one tooth, but she settled so they could rest their backs against her warm side and looped her tail around Marie.

“She's a fighter,” Porthos repeated, putting all the reassurance he could in his words. “Her name’s Marie. And I'm Porthos. ”

“Then we're pleased to meet you.”

He slept and woke in starts through the night, under the wheeling stars. She took a little more food from his hand. Sometimes he told her stories. 

Dawn found him with a bleary smear of light, and a pointy elbow to his ribs. He couldn't hear Marie's wheezes and panicked, reaching out. 

"Oh..."

Her eyes were open, gleaming topaz, and her airsacs had inflated; she floated lightly over the ground with a bare stir of her wings. She touched her nose to his and spoke with a voice like a distant choir,

"Good morning, Porthos."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost called this chapter Meet Cute, but decided it was too much of a mood swing.
> 
> **
> 
> Dearling carried Marie around by the scruff like a very large floating kitten for several weeks and everybody was very embarrassed. Then Marie got BIG.


	4. Constance: Call to Adventure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a time skip, here. Hi, Constance!

“You have little time for romance.”

Constance started and almost fell off the top of the climbing wall. It was quiet at this height, coloured with the sigh of wind in her ears. Across the reach of the covert, occasional lights of raucous activity brightened the buildings and great beasts stirred in the darkness. Dart was… somewhere out there, probably cuddled up to d’Athos, if she understood the feral aright. She regained her seat, straightening her back and tugging the skirts of her new coat over her breech-clad knees. The man who had spoken, a captain by his coat, was unfamiliar to her; she had an impression of a straight nose and tousled dark hair in the scanty light. He dropped down beside her without asking, and kicked his foot against the stone. They said that dragon-men were all libertines and rascals. They said the women who followed the regiments were no better than - Oh God, what had she done? Her husband’s letter rustled in her pocket.

“You and the feral,” he said quietly.

“Dart,” Constance said primly, naming the wiry beast of tan brown splotched with red.

“You haven't known each other long.”

Constance looked away. “Dart needs a captain, if he's to stay.”

“The feral is promising, but we can do without him. And he can do without you right now, not to put too fine a point to it.”

And that wasn't anything she didn't already know. She had been a convenience to Dart: enough of a captain to get him into the covert of the King’s Musketeers on his crazy vendetta, enough of a captain that Treville was willing to let them stay and train. The young dragon produced occasional, extravagant protestations of his adoration of her, but she knew what she was to him right now: nice to have, but not entirely real.

“It is different, when they put us to the egg,” the aviator said reflectively. “One becomes so busy simply keeping their bellies full, so exhausted with it over the first weeks, that any bond formed when they took our harness and our name is nurtured into a tolerable obsession. And of course, when it is a second or third captain the shared grief is a powerful tie. Bonding with ferals takes longer. But you have little time for romance.” He produced from his sleeve a little fan of pierced ivory struts and opened its painted silk folds with a crack, hiding his face and letting one liquid black eye peep over it, the picture of a coquette.

“If this is some kind of come-on to get me into bed...” she said dangerously.

He laughed, lowering the fan. “No. Though, my dragon likes you,” he added with a small grin. “If you ever incline that way.”

She slapped him, and he put his hand over his heart, lowering his head in silent apology.

“Captain du Vallon is a good man to talk to about the book learning,” he said, changing the subject. “He’ll let you sit in on the classes he runs for his crew: you’ll be astrogating before you know it. And Athos, grumpy as he is, can show you all there is about aerial manoevres. If you want to be here.”

“You think I don't?” she said harshly. Tonight, in truth, she did not. Her arms and legs burned from the climbing she'd been at today, her head ached from the shouting. Tonight she longed for the stagnant quiet of her husband’s house. His letter was in her pocket. D’Athos, the old dragon of Pinon, would fly her back she knew, if she asked. Her eyes pricked with tears.  

"I think you don't know,” the aviator said softly. And, “It is a hard service they bind us to - not the weather, or the hours, or the fighting.” He waved his fingers dismissively. “Living in the certain knowledge that someday one of you will wonder how it is you walk and breathe when your heart is quite gone from your chest.”

“I don't belong here,” said Constance, swallowing down the pain in her voice, “I'm no gentleman.”

“In truth,” said the aviator, “neither am I.” He smiled at her, putting a finger to his lips, and launched off the wall. He disappeared into the darkness, and the last Constance knew of him was a whoosh from below, the flapping of great wings, and the sight of a dragon carrying him up into the black sky.

 _The heart gone from your chest,_ he'd said, his dry tone undercutting the florid words with a real grief. And, _My dragon likes you,_ so matter-of-fact, as if that were the first and only thing that mattered.

Mother-of-God, Constance wanted to love and be loved like that. She wanted to _fly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> D'Artagnan - a scruffy but capable lightweight feral from the wilds of Gascony.
> 
> This is Constance from early season 1, swivelling between "gut you like a fish" and "clutch shawl and stare demurely at the ground".
> 
> "Though, my dragon likes you” - considering Dearling’s preferences and Constance's current lack of spending money, this is a huge deal. I'll be honest, much of her admiration comes from the hair, so long and silky with just the right amount of curl and when the sun strikes it like ^so it flames vivid red like garnets coming out of the earth and, and, and -


	5. How d'Athos, the Old Dragon of Pinon, Changed His Name and Became a Merry Widow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // To those coming to this from Musketeers fandom… The core of dragon-handling comes from their tendency to bond _hard_ with a single human, especially if the human is there when they hatch. As most of the larger dragons live two or three lifetimes, though, they generally have to live through the grief of losing a captain and accepting a new one - and it helps if there is an existing relationship with the new human. (If they can, heavyweight captains arrange to sire/bear children of an appropriate age to inherit the position when they’re gone.)
> 
> // “merry widow” - old colloquialism referring to a woman whose (old, rich) husband has died, leaving her with control of the funds, the social freedom of a widow, and the youth and enthusiasm to enjoy them. (Though I imagine *old* widows also enjoy the wealth and freedom.) Alice Clerbeaux was a merry widow.

“Du Troisville -”

“It’s Treville, now,” the green-and-gold heavyweight said equably, settled couchant on the sun-warmed crag of the tiny _sanctuaire_ of Pinon. “The custom has changed since you… retired.” His long, hooked tail dropped down behind him, twitching lightly, as he gazed over the crooked earth and broken hills leading into the wilderness of a place made for dragons who could not, or would not fight: those who disdained partnership with a captain, chaste as any human maiden; prisoners of war, their beloveds held hostage for their good behaviour; the very old; and the widowed - too sunk in grief to take a new captain. They were fed as long as they _stayed_ here in the ancient compact, leaving human lands be in exchange for hot red meat. And for the eggs they produced, packed up in straw and taken away to the fighting coverts to be cosseted and hatched into good soldiers.

Dwarfed by Treville, the blue-scarlet Garde-de-Lyon who still called himself d’Athos - _of Athos_ \- in the old style wrapped his tail primly over his forefeet, perched neatly beside him but facing the other way where one could see the track leading to the tiny village which served the _sanctuaire._ “New-fangled whims,” d’Athos said austerely.

A heavyweight’s shrug was a serious business, a matter of shifting tonnage and articulated shoulder-joints, and Treville made the most of it before the Defendeur-Brave settled again on the sun-warmed rock. “It is the fashion,” he said, “one adjusts with the changing times. As you might do, if you re-entered the service.”

D’Athos, lightweight, hunched his own dainty shoulders and said nothing.

“There’s a grace period for an experienced dragon, of course,” Treville said persuasively. “Ones such as we, who have fought in the wars and carry our own scars, who have buried heroes, no-one - not even the King - expects us to just pick up with some unlicked youth. If we bring our experience and wisdom to the Regiment, we are allowed to… try out… prospective captains.”

He ruminated on the bare crags of the breeding ground. “They think it an honour, the young ones, all of them, even to be considered.”

D’Athos twisted his neck to look at the heavyweight in startlement. _”All_ of them? How many have you… tried out?”

“I couldn’t possibly replace a hero such as General de Foix _lightly,”_ said Treville, yawning so that the yellowed spears of his teeth opened wide around the scarlet maw of his throat.

“It’s been twenty years,” said d’Athos.

“I’m picky.”

“You old flirt,” d’Athos grumbled, and turned back to watching the track.

“You don’t belong here,” Treville added seriously. “You were made for the delight of battle and you know it, not moldering out here.”

“I killed my captain,” Athos said simply.

Gently, as gentle as a heavyweight could be, so quiet and solid and soft that birds might settle on the stillness, Treville said, “You did not kill Thomas. It was poison. You know that; there was nothing a dragon could have done.”

“I killed her.”

“You didn’t -” Treville said a bad word. “She wasn’t.”

“I loved her,” he said, as small as a broken heart.

And he _had_ loved her, Anne of Breuil, the wife of Thomas his first captain. Dark-haired and mysterious to Thomas’s sunbright laughter, he had adored her as ferals loved the moon and would have sung their songs to her, if he had ever known the words.

Anne had loved him back, fiercely, so brave when most captain’s wives stayed away from the coverts. She had come to him when he was injured and savage with pain and, while his captain soothed him with gentle hands, she had stitched the tear in a fragile wing with neat stitches faster than that butcher of a dragon-surgeon ever could. When Thomas had died of a stomach illness so young she had wept, shedding for d’Athos’ sake the tears a dragon could not as they howled together at the sky.

What could possibly be more suitable than taking her on as his new captain?

And they had been so good, in the brief time they worked together - taking the point of the skirmishing wing, rallying nervous troops, fighting with the grace and ease and intuition of old partners. They had been heroes.

Until, three months later, someone found the arsenic in her gear…

“I loved her,” said d’Athos again, “and I killed her. What of that?”

“You are an instructive tale,” said Treville simply, “of the dangers of poaching.”

D’Athos winced, huddling into himself.

“Do you want _this_ to be Thomas’s legacy?” asked Treville fiercely. “Gone in disgrace into a _sanctuaire,_ of use only for breeding? I’ve met some of your offspring and they do well enough, but d’Athos, they’re not _you.”_

The blue-scarlet lightweight said nothing.

“You want to come back,” Treville said. “I know it. I know what you’re watching for.”

On the plain dirt track there was a flicker of movement. It wasn’t the cattle for eating. “You don’t know anything,” d’Athos grumbled.

A small band of village brats had appeared, sneaking far closer to the _sanctuaire_ than their parents would ever sanction. Their leader, an auburn-haired girl with her hair in two braids dangling over her patched dress dared to wave at d’Athos, standing still and fearless in sight of the dragonkind.

Her companions lost their nerve and disappeared down the dusty road and after a breath she followed them, but she looked over her shoulder as she went.

“You’re lonely,” said Treville. “Come back.”

“I’ll think about it…”

Treville nudged him lightly with his mountainous shoulder and sent d’Athos sprawling. “You do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _the tiny sanctuaire of Pinon_ \- in the Temeraire books, these combination prisons/retirement homes/dating services were known as ‘breeding grounds’ but what the hey, I’m Frenching this story up big time.
> 
> Given that a running plot of the series is realising that the dragons are treated pretty badly and working to get them better treatment and rights… digging into the set-up enough to be able to write fic about it is still _seriously giving me the willies._ (In canon, it’s pointed out that dragons tend not to have much feeling for their offspring once the egg is hatched but… yikes.)
> 
> // The kid at the end was Constance, by the by. (This is set several years earlier than "Call to Adventure".)


	6. Dearling: True Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Content warning for a certain level of squick unavoidable when traditional animal husbandry practices are applied to *sentient* animals. Discussion of sexuality. Discussion of captivity. Also, Aramis, in this continuity, *really* sleeps around.

“I'm not doing it,” Dearling said, digging one foot into loose sandy earth and flexing so that her talons dragged great furrows.

“Then don't,” her Captain said lightly, leaning, insouciant, against the only tree in the field. The harsh sun filtered through the dry leaves and dappled his face and a long aviator’s coat left unbuttoned in the heat of a Gascony summer.

“I'm _not_ having an egg with a stinky Spanish fire-breather. It's just showing away, anyway. A _skilled_ dragon, a _fighting_ dragon doesn't need any cute tricks -”

“My mother was Spanish,” Aramis said mildly.

Dearling pulled up short, her red-brown crest flattening behind her short horns. “Well, that's different. I'm sure she was lovely. And kind, and wise, and dead clever, too.”

“All of those things and more,” he said. He smiled, eyes distant and hurting, then shook himself. “She would have liked you very much.”

Dearling lifted herself higher, her crest raising and one dark wing flexing elegantly despite herself. “Then,” she huffed, “she must have had most excellent taste, also.” Aramis beamed. But, very small, the dragon added, “I still don't want to have an egg with him. I don't, I don't _care_ if it might breed the trait into my offspring. I just don't want to; it's not to my taste.”

“Then don't.” Aramis smiled with his eyes. Dearling opened her mouth to check, and he smelled of honesty, honesty and the prickly-earth scent of the peppers they had brought as a courting-gift. “We will tell a story, to Treville and the Cardinale, that you tried to make an egg and it didn't take. Very simple.” His dragon relaxed. “But,” he said thoughtfully, “El Príncipe Ardiente is a prisoner of war. His truest love has been taken from him, held hostage for his good behaviour. Were it I, in that situation, and you, I would be heartsick.”

One of Dearling’s sensitive ears moved. “Do you think he could use a friend?” she asked her Captain.

“I think he could use a friend, Adele,” Aramis answered, using her first, hatchling name.

“I can do _that,”_ she answered carelessly. “I'm ever so charming.” Her Captain stepped forward, then, arms open, until he was embracing her around her arched neck. She tucked her head so that her long snout and broad forehead were tight against his body. “Do you… do you mind when I pick out your lovers?” she asked hesitantly.

“Not at all,” he said, bracing his weight against her and tucking his own forehead against her hot hide. “I've met some superbly _interesting_ people, following your… guidelines. I like interesting.”

“You'd tell me if it bothered you,” she murmured, low, but the vibrations went right through his chest.

“I swear it, my love,” he said.

The sun beat down on them. It was glorious, the heat, but she could smell her Captain sweating. He was fragile, and needed looking after. Reluctantly she shifted her weight, looking ahead to the breeding ground. “Right! Time to show the princeling what a proper _French_ dragon looks like...”

Together, they leapt into the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Going by the Temeraire lore, a flecha-del-fuego is a smallish Spanish dragon that breathes fire, a rare and prized trait. There's an artist’s interpretation I really liked here: https://www.deviantart.com/kalia24/art/Flecha-del-Fuego-582109140
> 
> (According to the continuity of this set of stories, Dearling’s granddam is a flecha-del-fuego also, but she didn't inherit the firebreathing, just the nimbleness and some of the conformation. So, this match is definitely part of a breeding program.)
> 
> Turns out, Dearling and El Príncipe Ardiente got along like a house on fire: lots of running and screaming and that...


	7. Richelieu: Regalia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can all blame BazinMousqueton for this one.

In the great house of the Louvre is a chamber of stone and silence. The walls curve in a grand circle, the arch of the ceiling is buttressed with exquisitely precise mathematics. There is a gap in the ceiling, a perfect circle, through which sunlight filters down, lighting each tiny drifting dust mote, bringing fire to the heart of every cold gem and necklace and crown arrayed on fine velvet below.

It is the regalia, the gems associated with the monarchy of France. With these was Louis crowned, many years ago. There is a dragon among them, ruby red, blood red, the Cardinale, last relic of an ancient breed and more prized than any jewel.

The Cardinale was the dragon of Henri IV, once, attaining the man's companionship when he bought Paris with a mass, and he passed to the man's son in his turn, the sinewy beast dipping his long head so that a small child in a stiff brocade suit and gold-buckled shoes might touch the fine soft scales of his snout, greying with age. With the long life of his draconic heart, he might easily see another in the line, might retain the vigour in his limbs to take to the air with a child or grandchild perched on his back...

Louis comes here every day and why should he not inspect his royal possessions?  _ De Richelieu, _ he says to the dragon, naming him in the old form,  _ de Richelieu, let me tell you of my day. _ Louis was a fractious child, is an anxious man, and the Cardinale, full of dragonborn loyalty, is the only creature he trusts, above advisors, siblings, above his pale-eyed Spanish wife. So Louis speaks and he speaks, wound in the coils of the beast that knew his father, warm in the heat of de Richelieu, moved by the breath of de Richelieu, and the beast listens, without interruption or judgement.

And perhaps, after an hour, the Cardinale might say, in a voice of honey sourced from the bees of hell,  _ Far be it from me to dare advise Your Majesty, but you might try… _ and Louis will be soothed. He will step out of the treasure chamber with a clear head and bright eyes, with new purpose in his heart: as confident as any King in creation.

And in the fallen sunlight and the dark, curled on stone warmed by nearby buried bread ovens, the Cardinale broods over his treasures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _when he bought Paris with a mass_ \- Louis’ dad, Henry of Navarre, was raised Protestant. He had a claim by blood to the French throne, but had to fight to fix the claim and in the end converted to appease Catholic Paris. Hence “bought Paris with a mass”. 1.05 touches on this.


End file.
